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04 Aug 2011 14:54

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Biz: USDA knew about salmonella outbreak for two weeks

  • Officials knew that the infected ground turkey came from Cargill, inc. They just didn’t want to say anything because there was no way to know for sure. Cargill issued a voluntary recall yesterday, and the outbreak began in March. That’s kind of a long time — but with good reason. At first it was confusing to investigators because some people who didn’t eat the turkey would get sick, but when more cases of this particular strain of Salmonella became more widespread, an earnest investigation was started. Eventually it was traced back to Cargill, and the recall was issued — the third largest of its kind on record. Yikes. source
Posted by Justin Jones • 0 Comments • Permalink

03 Aug 2011 20:23

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Biz: Latest salmonella outbreak forces recall of lots of freaking turkey

  • 36 million pounds of ground turkey; no word on how many giblets source
  • » One person killed, 76 sickened: Salmonella is no laughing matter, and Cargill is responding quickly to the crisis. “It is regrettable that people may have become ill from eating one of our ground turkey products and, for anyone who did, we are truly sorry,” said Steve Willardsen, who’s in charge of the company’s turkey-processing business. Ground turkey is particularly susceptible to salmonella contamination — at any given time, federal research says that 10 to 15 percent of all ground turkey is contaminated with salmonella. In the case of the Cargill outbreak, the meat was infected with a antibiotic-resistant variety called Salmonella Heidelberg. While cooking the meat at 165° F kills the salmonella, the problem arises when handling the meat, which can infect other foods nearby. Might want to be careful, carnivores.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

07 Mar 2011 14:03

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Biz: Damn Skippy: Beware the high price of tainted foodstuffs

  • 2 Skippy peanut butter styles recalled for potential Salmonella poisoning source
  • » Step away from the jar: The hazardous brands being recalled are “Skippy Reduced Fat Creamy Peanut Butter,” and “Skippy Reduced Fat Super Chunk Peanut Butter,” as distributed in 16.3 ounce jars across the following sixteen states: Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Wisconsin. Though no illnesses have yet been tied to this recall, you can never be too careful when Salmonella is involved. This is the latest in a recent string of high profile food recalls, which helped generate momentum for last year’s Food Safety Modernization Act. The FSMA introduced a host of regulatory updates to a system that had, to that point, been largely unchanged for generations.
Posted by Chris Tognotti • 0 Comments • Permalink

22 Sep 2010 10:20

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U.S.: Wright County Egg Founder sorry his eggs made you sick

  • We were horrified to learn that our eggs may have made people sick. We apologize to everyone who may have been sickened by eating our eggs.
  • Wright County Egg founder Austin DeCoster • In prepared remarks for Congress, where he’ll speak today to explain how his company is responsible for so many salmonella-tainted eggs. His company’s barns were infested with all sorts of disgusting things that we won’t repeat here so as not to turn you off of eggs entirely. Partly because of this, there were traces of salmonella in the barns years before there was actually an outbreak. Also, there was another outbreak due to the same company way back in the late ’80s. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

15 Sep 2010 11:10

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Biz: That Iowa egg farm knew it had prior salmonella issues

  • 426 salmonella detections in less than two years source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

31 Aug 2010 12:49

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U.S.: Piles of manure taller than people found at salmonella-infested farm

  • The decrepit conditions in these henhouses reflect the fact that companies know that FDA inspections are so rare … that there is no urgency to fix their buildings and their operations.
  • The Center for Science in the Public Interest • In response to an FDA report on the Iowa chicken farms at the source of the recent salmonella outbreak. FDA investigators found, amongst other things, eight-foot high piles of chicken manure, some of which was forcing doors open and allowing rodents to enter. An estimated 1,470 people have been sickened so far. source
Posted by Seth Millstein • 0 Comments • Permalink

26 Aug 2010 10:35

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U.S.: Egg recall expands again: You jerks buying cage-free organic yet?

  • 2 new store brands have been added to the recall list source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 

24 Aug 2010 21:30

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U.S.: Why did the U.S. decide not to vaccinate hens from salmonella?

  • The U.S. chose not to force hens to get vaccinated for Salmonella. They claimed there wasn’t enough evidence that it did anything. (And it wouldn’t raise costs much; it’d cost less than a penny per dozen eggs.) With the very large egg-tainting problem in the U.S., it’s probably good to look at what happened after Britain mandated hen vaccinations:
  • 14,771the number of cases in England and Wales caused by the most common strain of salmonella in 1997, the year a new hen vaccine was tested by the country’s farmers
  • 581the number of cases in England and Wales last year, a decrease of 96 percent; the hen vaccine, which has been in use since 1998, has helped lead to yearly declines source
  • » So why didn’t they? Well, the FDA, while it claims that it looked at the vaccine seriously, said that there were significant differences between the U.S. version of the vaccine and the British one. The vaccine-maker, however, says that the differences were minor and the drugs were equally effective. Meanwhile, the current recall is at around 550 million eggs.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

20 Aug 2010 18:11

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U.S.: A second Iowa egg supplier nailed in salmonella outbreak

  • 170 million more eggs, this time from Hillandale Farms source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

20 Aug 2010 11:01

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U.S.: Egg-beaters: Salmonella cases way up since egg outbreak started

  • 1,953 cases of egged-on salmonella from May to July
  • 700 the normal number of cases during a period like that source
  • » Also good to note: It sounds like a lot of eggs, but based on the 6.5 billion eggs delivered in April, if similar amounts were shipped between May and right now, that 380 million would account for around 1.6 percent of the total shipments in the last three and a half months. It’s bad, but much less bad than one would think.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 
 
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